Page 136 of Tasty Cherry

“How is she?” Owen asks.

“Barely started.”

Tinsel is quiet, lying on her side, her belly heaving. It’s the rest of the donkeys carrying on.

“You think they’re cheering or jeering?” Brooklyn asks.

I sit down beside her. “Probably a little of both.”

Maverick wanders up. I don’t miss how Brooklyn adjusts her hair. Yeah, the two of them are still going at it.

Not that he’s slowed down. It’s common knowledge that several women from laundry and a couple from the kitchen make frequent visits out to the barn. Olive, our new assistant manager, has nicknamed the hay and feed room the “Hey, Girl, Hey” room.

Sebastian says Maverick is careful to do his deeds on his own time, not working hours, so they’ve left it. Nobody has complained about him since the Raya days, and we later learned Raya was stirring the pot anyway, offering better shifts to people who reported him.

She was a real piece of work. No one has heard from her since she left.

Maverick leans over the rail. He prefers to be out here. He and Jed, the animal husbandry guy, get along fine. We figure that when our permanent positions are announced in March, he’ll be placed out here.

The rest of us have no idea. We still go through rotations, although we no longer clean rooms or work in the kitchen.

“She’s going slower than the others,” Maverick says. “It’s her first pregnancy.”

Brooklyn leaps up at that. “Is she in danger?”

Maverick shrugs. “Not right now.”

“Why do we all have to be out here?” Owen asks. “Can’t we take shifts and wait in our own beds?”

Maverick sticks a piece of hay into his mouth and chews on it. With his flannel shirt, black vest, and boots, he’s changed his look. Brooklyn can’t take her eyes off him.

“It’s team building,” I say. “We’re supposed to be bonding.”

“I could stand for some bonding,” Maverick says. He glances at Brooklyn and pushes away from the pen. “I’m going to get some fresh straw to put down.” He heads for Hey, Girl, Hey.

I count how many seconds pass before Brooklyn follows him.

It’s thirteen.

“I’m going to stretch my legs,” she says.

Right. Her legs.

Now it’s just me and Owen. He joins me at the pen wall, looking down at Tinsel. “She’s never going to quit running after him, even if he’s bad news, is she?”

I wrap my arm around his shoulders. “It’s been four months. I can’t talk her out of it.”

“I can’t either.”

Tinsel makes another big push, and the first small hoof appears.

“Wild how they come out feet first,” Owen says.

“It won’t be long now. Less than an hour, I bet.”

Owen walks around the pen to check her from a different angle. At the end of the barn, a door opens, and a shadowy figure heads our way.

It might be Jed. He’s checked on us a time or two.